Here’s a tutorial on how to build an extremely strong password to use for logging into important sites like your bank, credit card provider, important web email accounts, etc.
First, start with a sentence consisting of 4 to 8 words that means something only to you so that it’s easy to remember. Then capitalise the first letter of each word:
My Mother’s Maiden Name Is Smith
Now, find punctuation or a symbol on your keyboard and use it between each word to fill in the spaces.
My*Mother’s*Maiden*Name*Is*Smith
Next, convert letters in the sentence to their similar numbers and symbols. For the purpose of this example, I’ve used 0 (zero) in place of the letter “o”, the # symbol for the letter “h”, the @ symbol to replace the letter “a” and the number 1 to replace the “i”.
My*M0t#er’$*M@1den*N@me*I$*$m1t#
You have upper and lowercase letters, numbers and symbols in a format that’s simple, a password that’s really easy for you to remember yet extremely hard for someone else to guess or crack. In fact, if you were a spy who was captured and was being tortured in a foreign country and they asked you what your logins and passwords were for your online contacts, you’d have a hard time telling your captors!
For added security, never use the same password on two different sites, and for heaven sake, never use the same password you use on Facebook or Twitter on your banking site or PayPal. If one of your accounts gets compromised, the person doing the compromising is smart enough to know that most people use the same email and password on lots of different sites and they may try to log in elsewhere using your credentials.
Be safe. But sadly, more and more people are falling victim to password phishing and cracking. Long, complicated passwords may be a pain in the butt to type in, but they’re worth it. Don’t be the next victim.